“Well… it’s a good thing they have so many cherry blossoms,” Mizushima Ran, her face always painted with a smile, declares as they stand in front of Horikawa Gakuen.

Three girls with a single purpose – to live as normal high school students – standing in front of the most unconventional school in the region: strewn with graffiti, no guard at the front gates, the sound of fighting in the distance, and screams enveloping the air that definitely do not belong to a teacher disciplining students who turned up late for the opening ceremony of their freshman year.

Yes. The sakuras* lining up the entrance to the school are the only thing anyone can call “beautiful.”

“Kaede-sensei* made a mistake. We should go home and have this fixed immediately,” Nakahara Kazuko, her shrewd eyes scanning the perimeter of the school and confirming that INDEED there isn’t any guard at the front gate to direct them, and that the high school looks more of a wasteland than an actual school, turns back.

A hand shoots up to stop her just in time.

Yamaguchi Mao, the eldest daughter of the Fire Dragon Yakuza and future Family Boss, smiles. “Kazuko-san, I think this may be fate.”

Both bodyguards exchange looks.

“Do they not say that everything that happens has a purpose?” Mao continues, “Maybe Kaede-sensei’s mistake is not so bad. And besides, who are we to judge how a place looks?”

“Oyassan*,” Ran puts her phone up and then reads from it, “Based from the internet, this school is the worst. They have their own gang culture and they have what they call Kings as leaders. They were also a former school for boys and only recently accepted females to try and temper the male delinquency but even now, after three years of being co-ed, the female population is only 1/16 of the students. Personally, I am surprised females would even go here.”

Mao listened but she would not be deterred.

She knew her father.

If she came back to the mansion and said a mix-up happened with her school, he would take it as a sign that she should not really push through with her plan.

Yamaguchi Nobunaga may be the strongest man in Japan but he is very superstitious and he won’t hesitate to use his superstitions against his daughter (especially when it benefits him to have her undergoing training for her succession rather than going to school).

“It also says here that their University acceptance rate is low,” Kazuko adds, looking over Ran’s shoulder at her phone.

“But we have no plans of going to University,” Mao deflects, her eyes shining like beacons, her spirit indomitable. “Come! Let’s begin our first day!”

She then ran up the locked school gates and jumped over them.

“I don’t know why we even think she’d listen," Ran mutters as she follows suit, easily jumping over the ten-feet high gates.

Kazuko pinches at her nose before doing the same, thinking, “This is going to be such boring three years.”

 

***

 

Matsuo Genpaku looks at the school entrance in confusion.

He had called over their leader, Rokuda Kei, when he saw three female students (most probably freshmen) standing outside the gates.

The Kings are very strict in their rules – any student who shows up late (male or female) is punished by having them run 10 laps in the track field. This is the first time he has ever seen females being late and wondered whether they would really punish them.

“Are you sure you are fully awake?!" Kei scolds. “You must be dreaming up girls.”

“Iie!!!*" he responds, “I saw them Kei-san. One girl with light brown hair who was looking at the Sakuras, another girl with jet-black hair in glasses, and one with curly hair tied in a ponytail. They were just right outside!”

Kei looks again at the clearly empty school entrance and back at Genpaku. “You are either dreaming or saying the truth and these “girls” saw the school entrance and backed off.”

“Unless they climbed the gates.”

A heavy hand landed on his forehead. “BAKA!* Our gates are ten-foot high, no girl can climb them.”

“Aishhh!!!!" Genpaku exclaims and rubs at his stinging forehead.

He knew what he saw.

The girls were beautiful, even, some of the prettiest he had seen in his life.

It was, in truth, the reason he called Kei over and wanted to discuss the punishment.

He was thinking that if they let the girls off easy, it could be their chance to finally have girlfriends.

Women are easily swayed by acts of kindness.

“I’m sure about what I saw," he murmurs to himself, “If you don’t want to have a girlfriend, I’ll search for them myself.”
 

***

 

The knock on his office almost gives him a heart attack.

In the two years he has been Principal, Moriai Kunitaro has only received a knock once.

Everyone just barges in to his office and demands things.

And THAT first knock only happened when the newest “Kings” deigned to visit him.

For the nth time he curses the fates that left him stuck with his job in Horikawa.

His door opens and in comes, Naru Hiroshi, his Vice-Principal. “Kocho sensei*…”

This surprises him even more and as soon as the door fully opens, he understands his Vice-Principal’s actions. Right behind Hiroshi are three young girls.

And they are the prettiest he has ever seen grace the halls of this school.

They look so out of place in the uniform and their surroundings, he almost feels like he is dreaming.

“Kocho sensei,” Hiroshi repeats, “These are some of our new students and they were late for the opening ceremony. It seems they are under Yoritaka-san’s class.”

He immediately looks at them to check if they have been punished by running ten laps in the field. They do not look winded or disheveled at all.

And one of them is even smiling like she was born out of sunshine.

Hiroshi lifts his eyebrows at him and he understands.

They need to protect these girls.

“We are sorry for being late Sensei," the one with a ponytail announces and all of them bow.

NEVER IN HIS LIFE AS THE PRINCIPAL OF THIS SCHOOL DID A STUDENT BOW TO HIM.

A 90-DEGREE BOW EVEN.

He will protect these girls with his life.
 

***

 

Horikawa Gakuen is not a school.

It is a den of delinquents.

Boys come here to make a name for themselves in fighting and the high school is unrivaled in the number of future criminals it produces.

Each generation, four kings are chosen to lead all of these juveniles.

They are the strongest and the best fighters in the school or maybe even the whole region.

Akanishi Jin, currently sleeping in a couch inside the Student Council office, is the King of the North. A man of brute strength and force, he is recognized as the toughest of the Kings and was chosen for the position when he easily beat up the former Kings all on his own. His name is a legend amongst high schools in Tokyo and other prefectures.

Just mentioning his name strikes fear in the heart of an enemy.

He has never lost a fight and it seems he won’t lose one ever. Anyone who knows him knows better than to try to engage him in a brawl.

Kamenashi Kazuya, his glasses pushed up his hair as he reads through Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, is The King of the East. He has the highest IQ in the whole school and more people are afraid of him than Jin exactly because of this.

No one can fool the King of the East for he sees through everything and he has no qualms in bringing pain to anyone who even thinks they can.

Yamaa Tomohisa, the wily King of the West, biting on a pencil, is playing shogi*. The one who looks the least lethal because of his vacant expression and normally cool demeanor is actually the one people must be careful about the most.

Everything is a farce with him. He is like an alligator, leaving his mouth open for prey to come to him and fiercely shuts his teeth down until he crushes the poor victim stupid enough to walk in to his trap.

Oguri Shun, the King of the South, is the one playing against Tomohisa. He has his hair in a braid to make it easier for him to fight because although he likes having it long, he abhors having to run his hand through bangs (especially when they are already bloodied).

He is the most ruthless amongst the four of them.

The King of the North trusts him to bring chaos during fights because he holds nothing back and will only be stopped if he loses consciousness.

It is to these four that Rokuda Kei must report the morning’s activities.

“Genpaku thought he saw three female students who were late but when he called me over, they weren’t there," he ends.

Kazuya raises his head from the book he is reading and looks at Kei. “Thought?”

“Or dreamed up probably," he answers. “There were no girls there when I looked.”

“They could have climbed the gates.”

“Kazuya-san, we have ten-feet high gates. No girl can climb that.”

This earns him a raised brow from the King of the East.

“Maybe none of the girls you know," Shun interjects as he moves a piece, still not looking up from the Shogi board.

Kei swallows. “I will investigate.”

Kazuya returns to reading and he knows he is being dismissed.

He bows and steps out of the student council room and wipes the sweat that exploded on his forehead.

He shouldn’t have told them about the girls.

Kei is sure that Genpaku dreamed all of it up.

Pretty girls in Horikawa who can apparently climb a ten-feet high gate? That was like the parting of the red sea.
 

***

 

You could hear a pin drop in the silence of Yoritaka Jun’s classroom when the Principal himself came in with three young girls in tow.

Principal Moriai explained that the three were late because he himself asked a favor of them and should not be punished.

All of the boys sat up straighter while the three girls in his class seem to have relaxed at their presence.

They introduced themselves in such charming manners too, bowing perfectly to everyone and smiling (except for the one named Nakahara Kazuko who bowed but looked as expressionless as a statue).

They were in uniforms but managed to look chic and well-dressed and something else he couldn’t quite put a finger to.

Something about the three new arrivals felt sophisticated? Adroit? Maybe even aristocratic?

Their movements were precise and so much more self-assured than normal teen-agers.

“There are three available chairs in the middle, please sit there," he directs after the introductions.

“Yoritaka-sensei," Mizushima Ran pipes up, “There are two available seats beside the window. Can Yamaguchi-san sit in either one?”

He feels a ghost walk over his grave at the question.

“Those seats already belong to two students, Mizushima.”

Yamaguchi Mao bows to him. “We are sorry, sensei. We will take the middle seats.”

He sighs in relief and watches them troop towards their chairs.

He would belatedly realize that Mizushima and Nakahara seem to defer to Yamaguchi in the manner that students in this school deferred to the Kings.

In a school full of violent oddities, he should have immediately noticed that for THAT veritably stands out.

 

***

 

Mao is used to being stared at.

As the successor of the biggest and strongest Yakuza family in the country, people ALWAYS look at her.

She finds nothing weird about the way almost everyone in their classroom is focused on her and Ran and Kazuko and that throughout the whole time that their teacher is teaching, she also does not realize that her utmost concentration on the lesson has affected everyone else so much that for the first time in his teaching career in Horikawa, Yoritaka Jun got to “ACTUALLY” teach an attentive class.

When his subject ends and lunch is announced, the three other girls immediately come to them while all of the boys go out of the classroom (spreading word about the three “goddesses” who arrived to class 1-C, of course, without Mao’s notice).

It is Ran and Kazuko who actually take note of everything but make no comment.

“Konichiwa!" A girl sporting chin-length hair greeted Mao. “I am Toda Makoto.”

Mao smiled wide at her. “It is great to meet you. Call me Mao. And these two are Ran and Kazuko. Let us all be friends!”

“Really?” It was almost a squeal.

“Of course! We are classmates after all!”

Kazuko nods at this when Makoto looks at her direction and she profiles the new girl immediately, observing the fragility in her stance and knowing she will pose no danger to anyone, much more her boss.

The two other girls introduce themselves as well and Mao, ever enthusiastic, asks them whether they have bentos* and offers to share what she prepared for lunch.

The others also look delicate enough that Kazuko is sure she could break their bones by just lifting her pinky.

“Mao is going to adopt them like they are stray kittens," she thought as Ran hands her chopsticks for them to start eating.

She fights the sigh wanting to come out of her chest and proceeds to eat.

For a school of supposed tough guys, no one raises any type of alarm so far.

Kazuko is sure, now that they have spent a few hours inside, that the school’s reputation is overrated.

“I collect Doraemon," Makoto regals them. “Do you collect anything?”

Such a normal and “soft” person.

The internet must be out of its mind to call this place notorious.

Savage fighters, her .
 

***

 

“Goddesses?”

 

“GODDESSES! The three of them came in and we were all awe-struck!”
 

“There are no goddesses in Horikawa! All the girls here look like cows and all the boys smell like cows.”
 

“There are now!”

 

***

 

The Horikawa rumor mill is in full swing throughout lunchtime and it eventually reaches Yamaa Tomohisa’s ears.

He remembers Kei’s report and as he heads back to the Student Council room with drinks for everyone, he mentions that Kazuya and Jin, who both belong to 1-C, might indeed have very pretty classmates.

Both Kings shrug.

“The standard of beauty in this school is so low, I will not be surprised to learn that they are actually just average looking," Kazuya comments.

“At least we have something that would take the boys’ minds out of fighting and creating enemies from the other schools," Jin declares on the other hand. “There really isn’t anyone in the area I want to fight because they’re either all pathetic or have gone on to College.”

“So you won’t take a look at them?”, the King of the West confirms.

“I’ve read the whole year’s curriculum, Tomo. Why do I need to waste my time going to the classroom?”

Tomo shrugs and looks at Jin but the King of the North already has his eyes closed again.

“Maybe I’ll take a look at them tomorrow, then. I am curious about these supposed goddesses.”

“Goddesses," Shun scoffs at him, sipping on his orange juice.

 

***

 

Ran wondered about those who owned the corner most seats near the window.

She knows how much Mao has dreamed of having a seat like that and sometimes just staring outside the school grounds while the teacher’s voice drones on.

And she wanted that for her boss because she knows how hard the girl fought to be allowed to experience high school like any normal teen-ager.

It was unheard of and even their fighting master and her pseudo-father, Ueda Kaede, went against it no matter how supportive he has always been of Mao.

“The moment she was born into this family, “normalcy” is a concept that has been thrown out of the window," Kaede told her when Mao declared the challenge to Yamaguchi Nobunaga on the terms of her succession. “Mao-san has never been normal and will never be normal. She is a Yamaguchi and Yamaguchis stand-out from everyone else.”

She believes the same but has never been able to refuse Mao anything.

Hence, when the future Yamaguchi Family Boss, beat her father and declared that she would like to go to high school before her succession training, she was there to watch the uproar and the will of steel that bested all of the naysayers.

Ever since her victory, Mao started to talk more of what she wanted to experience in school.

Kazuko remembered all of them.

Ran, meanwhile, knew she would take photographs of all the precious memories Mao wants to make.

It would have been great to have taken a photo of Mao on her first day, sitting in one of those chairs, staring out the window, as sunlight played on her hair.

Maybe when this Akanishi Jin and Kamenashi Kazuya come in she could convince them to give up their seats.

Being threatened with a broken bone normally makes negotiations easier.
 

***

 

As soon as Genpaku heard, he knew without a doubt that what he saw in the morning was not a dream at all.

“I told you!" He reminds Kei smugly. “Now, everyone else knows too! The three that they are talking about are, most probably, the girls I saw.”

With afternoon classes almost over, he and Kei proceed to Class 1-C to see these “Goddesses” for themselves.

The bell rings as soon as they hit the freshman classes’ corridor and students start to fill the hallways, although giving them space once they are recognized.

Heads turn at the Horikawa “Duke” who guards the walls of the school, (literally) wading through students.

Just as Kei steps in front of 1-C’s classroom door, it opens and something hard and solid hits him, sending him flying to the corridor’s walls.

Everyone pauses and when Kei shakes his head and looks up, he stares directly into the eyes of Yamaguchi Mao.

“Are you ok?" She asks in worry. “Gomen nasai.* I am so so so sorry.”

Two other girls help him up, both looking like models out of an An-An magazine, because it seems Genpaku has lost hold of his good sense and is just staring at the girls.

Kei is struck speechless and in the ensuring ripple of shock that indeed, Goddesses have descended upon Horikawa, no one noted how a woman was able to send a man 6-foot-3, weighing 200 pounds, flying into the corridor wall just by bumping against him.

Or that indeed, three girls had climbed over the school’s ten-foot gates.

 

* * * *

 

Daily Diary

 

Papa,

I spent my first day as a high school student today.

The uniform fit really well and Oyassan cooked delicious bentos for Kazuko and I.

The school is… well… it isn’t the type of school you would approve of but they do have beautiful Sakura trees and we made new friends today.

I even managed to take pictures with the camera you gave me.

The first picture I took is of a student sitting against rails and looking vacantly into space. He just seemed to not have a care in the world.

The second picture is of Kazuko smiling at Mao. She rarely does that.

The third picture is of our school’s sign – Horikawa. It is named after an Emperor of Japan who filled his reign with poetry, music, and scholarship.

I do doubt though if that is what our high school life will be filled with.

But I will capture as many memories of it as I can and will show all of it to you when we see each other again.

Spring came fast this year. Are the sakuras just as beautiful where you are?

Ran

 

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Japanese Words / Phrase translations:
 

Sakura – Cherry Blossom Tree
 

Sensei – an honorific used for teachers or mentors
 

Oyassan – means “father," an honorary term used by the Yakuza to call the Family Boss. In this story, as

 

Mao is the successor, only Ran and Kazuko call her by this honorific as they are her guards.

Iie – No
 

Baka – stupid
 

Kocho sensei – an honorific used by teachers to address the School Principal
 

Shogi – Japanes Cheese; the game of generals
 

Bento – lunch box
 

Gomen Nasai – I am sorry

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